In late 2016, amid the furor over Colin Kaepernick’s on-field protests against police brutality and rampant ...
Series
Public Thinker: Kim Phillips-Fein on Austerity and the Fall of New York
With New York City teetering on the brink of fiscal collapse at the end of 1975, Congress passed ...
B-Sides: Edward P. Jones’s “All Aunt Hagar’s Children”
A Jones story can break just about every writing workshop edict in its handling ...
On Our Nightstands: April 2019
At Public Books, our editorial staff and contributors are hard at work to provide readers with thought-provoking articles. But when the workday is done, what is ...
Public Thinker: Kathleen Belew on the Rise of “White Power”
Kathleen Belew is an international authority on the white-power movement ...
B-Sides: Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker”
Growing up, I knew and loved a string of books written by Russell and illustrated by Lillian Hoban. My sister and I read them—The Mole Family’s Christmas, The ...
Public Thinker: Thomas J. Sugrue on History’s Hard Lessons
From producing towering classics in the field of urban history to penning ...
On Our Nightstands: March 2019
At Public Books, our editorial staff and contributors are hard at work to provide readers with thought-provoking articles. But when the workday is done, what is ...
The Afronaut Archives: Reports from a Future Zambia
“Most Westerners don’t even know whereabouts in Africa we are.” So said ...
Public Thinker: Jack Halberstam on Wildness, Anarchy, and Growing Up Punk
Defying disciplinary categorization, Halberstam’s work draws on ...
Virtual Roundtable on Fairness in College Admissions
The college admissions scandal exposed criminal and unethical actions that undermine the promise of the American university system. To get ...
Shoptalk: Overheard at ACLA 2019
This year’s annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association gathered at Georgetown University. Participants met in small ...
Public Thinker: Josephine Livingstone on the Critic’s Voice
As a graduate student, Josephine Livingstone realized early that an ...
Public Thinker: Stuart Kirsch on Engaged Anthropology
Stuart Kirsch began his career as an anthropologist doing research on myth ...
B-Sides: Randall Jarrell’s “Pictures from an Institution”
While hard at work on his 1954 Pictures from an Institution, Randall Jarrell ...
On Christopher Street Pier
This month, Public Books mourns the loss of the writer, teacher, and editor Ellis Avery to leiomyosarcoma, a rare uterine cancer. Ellis’s essay about a beloved ...
On Our Nightstands: February 2019
At Public Books, our editorial staff and contributors are hard at work to provide readers with thought-provoking articles. But when the workday is done, what is ...
Public Thinker: T. L. Taylor on Gamergate, Live-Streaming, and Esports
The qualitative sociologist T. L. Taylor is a professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and cofounder and director of research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to ...
Virtual Roundtable on Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons
Is it legal? Is it constitutional? Is it just?
B-Sides: Chaucer’s “The House of Fame”
For years, and with particular intensity since the 2015 Dylann Roof shooting and 2016 election, we have debated the fate of not only Confederate monuments but ...
